


It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

by imaginary_golux



Series: Harlequin [4]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars: Shattered Empire
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Storytelling, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 09:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10761330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: An interlude in the Harlequin 'verse, featuring space dads:Thunderstorms bring back bad memories for Point and Clover, and Poe does his best to distract them with tales of his own personal hero: his mother, Shara Bey.Beta, as ever, by the most wonderful Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw, and also by Starbird.





	It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

Poe has a mental list of all the things that might cause Clover to have what he’s started to mentally call ‘a bad moment’ - angry superior officers, unexpected physical contact, General Leia rounding a corner without warning. Point, too, has some of the same issues. They make sense to Poe, and he’s doing his best to help the kids learn to cope with them.

He was not expecting _thunderstorms_ to be a problem.

Their new base is on a planet that doesn’t have storms _often_ , but when it does, they’re spectacular. Poe wakes in the middle of the night to the rolling rumble of thunder, sounding like the fighter engines of the gods. Beside him, Finn sits bolt upright and shudders, hands clenched in the sheets. “Red alert,” he gasps.

Poe scrambles upright, prying one of Finn’s hands off the sheets and curling his own around it. “No alert, buddy,” he says hastily. “It’s just a thunderstorm. Everything’s _fine_.”

Finn shudders again and some of the tension goes out of his shoulders. “Just a thunderstorm?” he says warily. Thunder rolls again, and he flinches. “Shit. It sounds like live fire exercises.”

Poe winces. “No, buddy, just thunder, I promise -” he breaks off, meeting Finn’s eyes in sudden mutual horrified realization. “The kids.”

“Shit,” Finn says, and scrambles out of bed, Poe right behind him. They cross the corridor at a jog, and Poe knocks on Clover’s door loud enough to be heard over the storm outside.

“Clover? Point? You guys okay?”

There’s a long pause, and Poe is wondering if perhaps the kids have managed to sleep through this, or whether he should open the door just to check, when the door slides open. Point is standing by the door control, eyes wide as saucers, hand trembling a little. Peering past him, Poe realizes that Clover is _under_ her bunk.

“Hey, kiddos,” he says gently, and steps in, reaching out to touch Point’s shoulder gently. “Hey now. Just a thunderstorm.”

Point flinches hard as another roll of thunder rumbles through the base. “Okay, a really _big_ thunderstorm,” Poe admits, and kneels down next to Clover’s bunk. “Clover, honey, come on out?”

There’s a brief pause, and then Poe’s lap is full of trembling ex-cadet. Point, Poe sees when he glances up, is nestled against Finn’s side, Finn’s arm around his shoulders. “Okay,” Poe says, standing up carefully - thankfully Clover is still light enough for Poe to manage that. “Come on, you two, we’re all going to huddle up in our bunk and I’ll tell you guys a story to distract you from the storm. Okay?”

Clover nods against his throat, and Point swallows hard and echoes her nod. Finn ushers Point across the hall, and Poe follows them with Clover clinging to him, nudging the door closed as he goes.

The bunk is not quite large enough for four, really, but they make it work. Poe ends up in a corner, propped up on pillows, with Clover curled up in his lap and clinging to him, Point lying next to him with one protective hand on Clover’s trembling back, and Finn lying precariously along the edge of the bed, one arm slung over Point and his hand warm on Poe’s leg. Poe takes a deep breath and presses a gentle kiss to Clover’s hair.

“Okay,” he says, loud enough to be heard over the rain and wind and occasional rumbles of thunder. “Now, this was my favorite bedtime story when I was a kid, even littler than the four-year cadets, and it’s a true story. Back during the days of the rebellion, my Mom, Shara Bey, and my Da, Kes Dameron, were both in the Rebellion. My Da was a Pathfinder, and I’ll tell you about some of his adventures sometime, if you like. But my Mom was a fighter pilot -”

“Like you,” Clover murmurs, and Poe strokes a gentle hand over her hair.

“Just like me,” he agrees. “That’s her old jacket Finn’s wearing, too, that he got from me. She was the best fighter pilot in the Rebellion, except maybe Wedge Antilles and Luke Skywalker, and she pulled a lot of really crazy stunts.”

Point chuckles, a tiny tentative sound. “Like you,” he says. Finn laughs. Poe sighs.

“Yeah, just like me,” he agrees again. “I come by it natural, as they say on Yavin. So. This was just after the Battle of Endor - you guys know about that, yeah?” Clover nods. “Okay. So, Mom was the personal pilot for General Leia, and they’d gone to visit Queen Sosha Soruna of Naboo. You guys know that Naboo was once the Emperor’s homeworld?” Another nod. “So. Because he was a really nasty person, the Emperor had rigged satellites that would cause storms, far worse than this one, to destroy Naboo in the event of his death or if he was just feeling nasty. And Mom and General Leia were on-planet when the satellites activated. It was _awful_. There were fires and floods and lightning strikes and all sorts of dreadful things.”

Clover shivers. Poe strokes her hair again. “So General Leia figured out that all the nastiness must be because of the satellites, and that someone would need to go up in a starfighter to destroy them. Now, who do you think that was?”

“Shara,” Point says quietly. Poe grins down at him.

“Precisely. Mom volunteered at once. But one starfighter wasn’t going to be enough, and there weren’t very many fighter pilots on Naboo, because the Emperor didn’t want them to have a military. So General Leia said that _she_ would fly a starfighter, too. Did you know she could do that?”

Three heads shake. Finn’s eyes are wide. “Well, now you know. She’s almost as good as her brother Luke. But two people would _still_ not be enough. Mom and General Leia were very worried that they might fail, even if they did their very best. But _then_ -” he breaks off for a long roll of thunder, and chuckles. “Then someone showed up that they were not expecting at _all_. It was Queen Sosha Soruna herself! She said that she could fly a starfighter, too.” He chuckles. “Now, this was my very favorite part of the story. Queen Sosha Soruna and General Leia could fly starfighters, but they knew they weren’t as good as my Mom. So do you know what they did?”

Clover shakes her head. She’s stopped trembling and has uncurled a little, which is probably a good sign. “They told my Mom that since she was the most experienced pilot there, _she_ should be in charge of their tiny squadron. So my Mom got to give orders to General Leia and a genuine _queen_.”

“Wow,” Point says, eyes wide. “She gave _General Leia_ orders?”

“She did,” Poe says, nodding. “They all went up in these _ancient_ starfighters - N-1s, the best they had available - and then, just when they thought they would be able to destroy all the satellites and be done easily, a whole _horde_ of TIE fighters showed up. The after-action report counted seventy-two of them.”

“A whole complement,” Finn murmurs, and Point nods.

“Yep,” Poe agrees. “So they _had_ to destroy the satellites, and quickly; but they had to defeat the TIE fighters, too. Since my Mom was the best pilot, she told General Leia and Queen Sosha Soruna to take out the satellites, and _she_ went after the TIE fighters. Just her, against seventy-two TIEs. And do you know what, kiddos? She took out _sixty-eight_ of them. Queen Sosha Soruna and General Leia got the other four.”

“Whoa,” Point says, sounding awed. Clover actually sits up far enough to look up at Poe’s face.

“Really?” she asks. “Just her against a whole _complement_?”

“She was _amazing_ ,” Poe says. “I can show you the after-action report if you like; I have it on holo. She managed to keep the TIE fighters from killing her squadron long enough for them to destroy all the satellites - although Mom’s starfighter _was_ so badly damaged that she didn’t think she was going to make it back. Thankfully, General Calrissian showed up with the rest of the fleet, and Mom _did_ make it safely home. Which of course you knew, because otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

Clover giggles.

“And _that_ is the story of how my Mom saved Naboo and got to give orders to a queen and the General herself,” Poe says, grinning. Outside, the rain and wind have died, and the thunder is moving away, its rumbles barely audible.

“Your Mom sounds really brave,” Point says sleepily.

“She was,” Poe says, as Clover snuggles in against him. “She was the bravest person in the whole galaxy, I think.” He smiles down at his strange little family. “She woulda loved you guys.”

“Tell us more stories about her?” Clover asks, muffled against Poe’s shoulder. She is half asleep already, and so is Point, Poe sees. He grins.

“Well, if you insist,” he says, meeting Finn’s eyes and winking. “So. There was the time she and Luke Skywalker went to rescue a pair of trees…”

*

Poe wakes with a crick in his neck and a kid draped over his chest, another snuggled against his hip. Finn is standing beside the bed, a warm smile on his lovely face. “I’ll tell Jess you’ll be a bit late this morning,” he murmurs, leaning over to press a soft kiss to Poe’s hair. “See you later, yeah?”

“Thanks, love,” Poe whispers back.

“And Poe?” Finn adds. “You’re just as brave as your mother was, you know. You’re a hero, just like her.”

Poe watches his beloved leave the room with a silly smile on his face. Finn’s wrong - Poe might never be as brave as his mother was - but oh, it’s nice to know Finn loves him so.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr as imaginarygolux - drop on by!


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